I spoke to the teacher in Bijawar a few days ago, and they’ve started computer lessons again! Success! One of the computers has gone missing, which is unfortunate, but not entirely unexpected. Expensive things have a tendency of disappearing in the village environment. Another one of the computers isn’t currently working, but the teacher is...

Tomorrow is our last day in Bijawar, and we’re wrapping up all the things we’ve started this visit. We finally met with all three government officials a few days ago: the DEO, the CEO, and the Collector. They were all super positive about the work that we’re doing and the plans that we have for...

As promised, here are pictures. Here are all the teachers gathered around a computer watching the Thriller video. The boys’ school was recently repainted in this great cotton candy shade of pink. It used to be a really dingy shade of yellow. The stairs in the picture above lead to what will eventually be...

For some time, the principal of the Boys’ HS School has been asking us to bring him a Michael Jackson CD. When we finally did, the teachers at the school immediately plugged it into a computer and couldn’t take their eyes off the (admittedly pretty great) Thriller video. I’ll have pictures for you as soon...

When the UPS unit originally stopped working last November, we asked the school to put in a request through official government channels to get it fixed, figuring that it couldn’t hurt. Well, after a year of struggling to just get this one piece of hardware fixed, or to find a workaround, the government sent the...

We’ve finally made some progress on getting the school a solution to their broken UPS. In March, we tried to use a voltage stabilizer as a cheaper alternative, since buying a new UPS was proving to be too expensive, but that plan didn’t work. The stabilizer couldn’t handle the large voltage fluctuations at the school....

I haven’t updated in a while, but here’s a picture of the wires at the boys’ HS school. Pretty horrifying, right? Here’s a close-up. See the rock? The one tied to the wire to provide enough tension to keep everything in contact in all the right places? Yeah.

We talked to the teacher at the boys’ high school last night, and he confirmed that they bought one voltage stabilizer for their computers. We think that this can serve 5-6 computers at one time, but he’s going to do some testing and find out for sure. Board exams started at the school at the...

This is a mostly comprehensive summary of what we did in Bijawar this December. Computer maintenance We talked to the people at two computer shops in Chhatarpur – Microworld Computers, whom we were referred to by an acquaintance who runs a cyber cafe, and Computer Care & Ware. We stopped by Microworld Computers, but there...

I’ve been in Bijawar since Thursday, so here’s what’s been going on since the last time I wrote. I finally got Wipro to fix the broken CPU with a new hard drive (they’d previously replaced the monitor), which we still have to test to make sure it actually works. I’m not sure whether it’s got...